Earth, a love story

On a warm morning in August Christopher Columbus launched several ships with some others in order to find Japan, because he knew it was over there somewhere. Maybe all sailors of old inherently knew the earth wasn’t flat by the way the horizon fell into the sea and land disappeared. But some men were doubtful and wished to go home.

They sailed forever it seemed and then they saw it and he knew. Columbus knew he was in India and called the people Indians. That was the day the final lines began to fall on the map. The map was a globe. And the map passed through a thousand hands until it became complete. It was a wonderful drawing.

North and South America were the same shape as Africa like a giant puzzle drifting apart but no one remembered. The earth knew what the monkeys didn’t – it was a big adventure. A mystery for the monkey to discover. An adventure so massive it took millions of years to complete and there were enough questions and answers to satisfy everyone who went along on that trip. Some went ahead of the others and didn’t look back. So that eventually, in each new land, there were people who knew everything there was to know about the trees, herbs, and rivers. It was a wonderful excursion.

Now the scatterlings were reunited. So the monkey drew the final lines of the map of the body of the earth and suddenly understood the small jungles to be one great jungle. Well sort of. Because when the map was complete the monkey was still at war and not quite ready to see what he saw. There was still a puzzle piece missing it seemed.

But the time was such that invention and discovery were everywhere and eventually two great enemies invented weapons so dangerous the wars became too deadly to play. Shortly after that they found a new game, called pride, and the prize became the moon. The rules were simple: the first one to arrive there would be right. And the others would be wrong. That’s how the contest was designed. Winning was truth.

So the monkey went to the moon and while he was there he discovered two things. He saw the true face of the earth. And realized that he was like every monkey, including his greatest enemy. Then he took a photograph of the blue-white sphere floating in space which proved these truths – there was no separation. It was all one thing. And he brought the evidence home.

And suddenly the earth made sense. As in a dream the universe revealed itself. Oh!! said billions of monkeys with one voice. It’s beautiful. We’re beautiful. The jungle was not a Jungle at all. It was the earth dressed in trees and oceans, like a land of make believe so there would be a billion things to do and great a contest which forced us to elevate ourselves constantly in evolution, inventions and ideas. So life would always be interesting and challenging for everyone. And it was. But it was lonely too. Because there had always been this separation which no one really understood until that simple day on the moon.

For one instant we knew there was no we. We were I. One single simple I. And the struggle and the contest was designed to constantly teach us to improve so that we could go out there and look back at ourselves. And see . . .

It was so simple it should have been obvious all along. But then there would have been no adventure. No mystery to solve and nothing to look forward to. In the dream of the moon the monkey understood completion. But that was a long time ago, in a different century, and the monkey craved more adventure and needed to act like a monkey again. He needed to be in the great contest again. To discover new challenges. He needed to forget that all were one. But in order to do that he needed to act like the discovery never happened.

Except that it did happen and every night, with eyes shut, and breath easy, deep inside the sleeping monkey was awake, and remembering.

It seems like a long time ago now. And I stand on the shores of North America facing Japan, the gateway to India. No. I am North America. And behind me is the sun rise, always coming from Africa – from the heart. And my mind, my little monkey, has a memory of how we fit together. And how we split apart and the reason for earthquakes and volcanoes. Yes, its all there, and drifting away again.